CHAIRMAN'S CORNER

Dear FIAP members,

1999 was an exciting year of change for FIAP. We introduced electronic elections and an electronic newsletter to hasten communication with our members. The dollars we saved have now, for the first time, created a surplus in our FIAP treasury. We look forward to using this surplus to initiate new programs for our members.

This year, we will fulfill a promise we made to the membership. In partnership with the American Physical Society and several industrial research organizations, the Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics (FIAP) will soon announce an experimental "APS Faculty Industrial Fellow Program" for Academic Faculty in Physics. We are creating this program to strengthen the ties between U.S. Industry and Academia, to enrich the experiences of academic faculty, and to enhance education in Physics. Under this program, industrial laboratories will sponsor a faculty member on leave to work at the industrial host institution. Faculty Fellows will bring new skills and knowledge to the host organization and help participating labs enter new areas of research to develop ties with academia. We already have commitments to participate from several leading industrial research laboratories, including Bell Labs, Dow Corning, Ford Motor, HRL Laboratories, IBM, Motorola, and Schlumberger-Doll.

In the near future we will announce this program on the APS web page. You can help us make this program a success. If your laboratory or enterprise is interested in the possibility of hosting one or more fellows for an industrial leave you will be able to register your participation with the APS. You will be asked to supply a contact name and address and a description of one or more of the leave opportunities at your lab.

We are still in the process of defining some details of the program (please send your suggestions or input to kaufman@almaden.ibm.com). Applications for Fellowships will be collected (on the web) and screened by the APS. The duration of the industrial fellowships may vary. Faculty members who win an industrial fellowship will, for the duration of the fellowship, be employees of the sponsoring industrial institution. As such they will be expected to honor and agree to standard employment agreements of the host institution including conditions of employment and intellectual property agreements. All decisions to hire (to award or offer a fellowship) will be made by the industrial sponsor based on the quality of the candidates. Fellow salaries will be determined based upon experience and local market pay. The salaries and expenses of participating faculty members will be paid by the industrial host and sponsor.

Please be on the lookout for the "APS Faculty Industrial Fellow Program" announcement.

Best Regards,

James Kaufman
Chairman, APS Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics

ANNOUNCING AN INDUSTRIAL AND APPLIED PHYSICS TREASURE HUNT!

Do you know about any hidden treasure? That is, do you know about a treasured colleague who deserves to be an APS Fellow within FIAP? We want to find her or him! Besides those who have had a long and illustrious career, we also are looking for "early treasure," namely, people who may not have spent many years in their physics lives, but who have already made their mark. In all cases, we have in mind contributors to applied physics, be they in industry, national laboratories, or academia. Their contributions may be notable discoveries, applications, teaching and/or societal activities. The FIAP Fellowship Nomination Committee makes a special effort to look for major industrial advances, taking into account the perhaps different measures of success in the comparison of applied and basic research.

If you accept this assignment (and you should!), please pay close attention to the need for a complete application, including two sponsors who are APS members plus two or three or more supporting letters. A thoroughly prepared application with vita is very much needed. The deadline for the submission of fellowship nominations for FIAP is February 20th, 2001. Details of the nomination process, the nomination form, and the address to which the nomination must be sent can be found in: /fellowship/

ORGANIZE A FIAP FOCUS SESSION AT THE MARCH MEETING

We invite all FIAP members to consider organizing a focus session for the next APS March meeting. Past FIAP focus sessions at the March meetings have been successful in attracting high-quality contributed papers and sizable audiences. These sessions provide a benefit to those participating in them, and we would like to have more of them. Focus sessions are easier to deal with at the sorter's meeting, and they give the FIAP program chair more clout in scheduling and room assignments. The procedure for proposing and getting a focus session accepted is given below.

1. Decide on the title for the session and write a short paragraph (2-3 sentences) describing the topic and the scope of papers to be included.
2. Suggest one or two invited talks that would be appropriate for leading off the session. This step is optional. Some focus sessions have no invited talks. These talks will have to conform to the general rules for APS invited talks, but they may not count against our total allotment of March Meeting invited talks. The organizer should chair the session. If your idea overlaps an area also covered by one of the other APS units (DCMP, DMP, DCP, etc.), consider a joint session, sponsored by both and talk to someone in the other unit about co-organizing it.
3. Submit your proposal using the web site at fiap2001@aol.com, sometime after May 15. Send questions to the Coordinator of Focus Sessions for the FIAP March Meeting Program Committee, Bill Weber, at wweber3@ford.com.
4. Notification of proposals that FIAP will recommend to the APS will be made throughout the summer, continuing until the October deadline. If your proposal is accepted, it will appear in the November APS Meeting Announcements sent to all APS members, both in the list of Sorting Categories and the list of Focus Sessions (where the paragraph and contact information for the organizer are also given). It is also a good idea to send an email advertisement with the session title and descriptive paragraph to a targeted group of physicists who might be interested in contributing. Past March Meeting Bulletins are useful sources for this information.
5. The 2001 March Meeting FIAP Program Committee would like to encourage sessions on the environment and health and on other topics of particular interest to the Seattle and Pacific Northwest communities.
6. The APS Program Committee reserves the right to rearrange sessions in their October meeting to set up the final program, after which they will issue invitations for invited talks. (The FIAP Program Committee only endorses proposals.)

Update on Invited Talks sponsored by FIAP for the Mar2001 Meeting, as of 2000-05-25

See the FIAP web site for further info: /units/fiap/fiap2001.cfm

Notes:

1. Additional proposals are welcome. The FIAP Mar2001 Program Committee will continue "approving" proposals as soon as possible after we get names and abstracts. (The APS makes final approval in the Fall, but usually approves our plans.)
2. Suggestions for proposers: a. Aim for a presentation of your topic that will have wide interest (most important); b. Consider (optional) connections to our themes of environment, health and connections to industry in the Seattle area; c. Make the titles and abstracts interesting and easy to understand; d. Propose only eligible speakers. See the FIAP web site for eligibility rules.
3. We'll work to arrange joint sessions with other sections of the APS. The APS has given FIAP 8 slots, but a joint symposium only counts as 1/2 a slot. Proposers may suggest a possible joint sponsor.
4. We can create additional Focus Sessions out of Symposia that we can't fit in. Focus Sessions are limited in a different way. They have 1 or 2 invited talks but must have enough contributed papers on the topic to fill the session.
5. Use this email address for correspondence about the program: fiap2001@aol.com

Received so far:

Statements of intent to propose Symposia and Focus Sessions:

Summary of Symposia topics:

1. Special: 2
2. Environment: 4
3. Health: 3
4. Microsystems: 3
5. Nanosystems: 3
6. Other: 3
7. Communications: 3

Total: 21
Summary of Focus Session topics:
Total: 2

Approved so far:

1/2 special symposium
1 Pake Prize Symposium

THE 2001 GEORGE E. PAKE PRIZE

The members of the Forum are strongly encouraged to submit nominations for the 2001 George E. Pake prize, which comes with a $5000 award. The purpose of the Pake prize, which was endowed by the Xerox Corporation, is to recognize outstanding work by physicists combining original research accomplishments with leadership in the management of research or development in industry. The Pake prize recipient(s) will be invited to present their work at the 2001 APS March meeting in Seattle, WA. Nominations must be submitted to Hans Coufal, the chairman of the nominating committee, no later than July 3, 2000. Detailed information, including the eligibility requirements and nomination guidelines, can be found on the APS website (/praw/pake/descrip.cfm).

FIAP ELECTIONS, SPRING 2000

Candidate Information and Statements

FIAP will run its election for new members of the Executive Committee this Spring. Please watch your email for news of the electronic election, which will start June 12th and end August 1st.. Eric Moser has worked to make a smooth web-based election for this year. We have an excellent slate of candidates from industry, national labs, and academia running for the positions of Vice-Chair (1 slot) and Member-at-Large (2 slots).

The Vice-Chair position is an officer position that lasts three years. During the subsequent years, this officer becomes the Chair-Elect and finally the Chair of FIAP. The FIAP Vice-Chair also serves as the Program Chair for the March Meeting. This is a crucial role, since the March Meeting is the primary event our members attend during the year.

The Members-at-Large serve important roles as committee members for the Nominating Committee and the Fellows Committee. They organize sessions and special events for the March Meeting, help with communication to the 5,000+ FIAP members through the website and email, and attend APS organizational meetings (i.e. the sorters meeting).

This year's candidates for Vice-Chair are Simone Anders (LBNL) and Kenneth Hass (Ford). Candidates for Member-at-Large are: Yang-Tse Cheng (GM), Ruby Ghosh (Michigan State Univ.), Zafar Iqbal (Honeywell), Kenneth Evans-Lutterodt (Lucent), Dvora Perahia (Clemson Univ.), and William Risk (IBM).

Laura Smoliar
Eric Moser

APS TECHNICAL NETWORK

Do you often have scientific and technical questions when you're working on new projects, but lack the resources to find the solutions?

Could you ever make good use of a friendly expert in a particular scientific area to move your work forward?

Or

Are you willing to share your scientific and technical knowledge with fellow APS members in industry, academia, government or other arenas?

APS has developed the APS Technical Network as a resource to link our members; we want to help members who need technical advice find other members who are willing to help.

This Network is a database of the educational and technical experience of those APS members who have provided this information and who are willing to share their expertise informally with other APS members. The purpose of this program is to establish a professional network of physicists (defined broadly) across academia, national labs, and industry to help physicists make professional contacts in several areas of research and development. Besides the stated goal of linking physicists to solve technical problems, there are additional ways these contacts may prove useful. For example, as science & technology rapidly evolve, it is often necessary for physicists and other professionals to change the direction of their research or even enter new disciplines. The Technical Network can help those individuals, particularly physicists transitioning from academia to industry or vice versa, by providing a rich resource of professionals with whom they can network, develop mentor relationships, or just ask a few questions.

If you are interested in sharing your expertise with others for the advancement of science, or if you are in need of an expert to help you solve your technical problem, please visit /TN/ to enroll or search the database.

Disclaimer

The Technical Network is not a consultants list and in no case should scientists who chose to participate be asked to reveal proprietary or confidential information. However, it is possible that some informal contacts might lead to specific consulting agreements.

The information contained in this database is based on information provided by the individuals who have signed up for this program. APS has not checked or verified this information and therefore, does not make any representation concerning the accuracy or completeness of the information in the database. APS is not liable for any consequences resulting from the use of any information obtained herein.

This service is a benefit for APS members, and APS does not receive any fees whatsoever as a result of providing this service for its members.